A few days ago, I was sitting at my desk working when my phone rang.
It was a call from home. In a few brief sentences, I was told that my brother-in-law—my youngest sister’s husband—had passed away from a sudden brain hemorrhage. He was in his early thirties, remarkably healthy, with no underlying conditions whatsoever.
For the first few minutes after hanging up, I felt no surge of grief, not even tears. I just sat there, watching the cursor blink on my computer screen. Five minutes earlier, I was tweaking a sentence, consumed by editorial choices. Now, the room was completely quiet.
I stared at the cursor, wondering what I was supposed to do next, while the computer waited for a keystroke that wasn’t coming.
In the days following the news, my mind kept searching for a reason—any reason—to make sense of his sudden death. I caught myself desperately hoping for a clear explanation: maybe he lived recklessly, maybe he ignored a doctor’s warning, or maybe he was burning himself out in a relentless pursuit of money. I wanted to pin it down, as if finding his mistake could give the rest of us an immunity card, keeping my family, my friends, and myself safe from the same dark corner.
I dropped that thought quickly. It felt disrespectful to him and his family, and completely pointless. Because the issue was never about how anyone chooses to live.
Most of us build our days around a rhythm we trust. We watch what we eat, track our workouts, monitor our sleep, and schedule our checkups. There is nothing wrong with any of this. These are sensible habits that take care of the body we’re given.
The trouble begins when we project our own logic onto a world that doesn’t work that way. We start viewing our discipline as a private guarantee. We act as if living by the book earns us a Golden Buzzer that lets us skip the random, unexpected tragedies of life.
Once that illusion breaks, panic takes over. When we realize that playing by the rules doesn’t buy us absolute safety, our minds naturally scramble for new ways to regain control.
Some of us spiral into anxiety. Every minor discomfort becomes a potential catastrophe. We start checking our pulse constantly, scrolling through medical articles, trying even harder to micromanage every detail of our daily lives.
Others swing in the opposite direction, slipping into nihilism: If discipline can’t protect me, what’s the point? Or we lean into pure indulgence, chasing short-term pleasures to numb the uncertainty, telling ourselves that nothing matters anyway.
All these reactions come from the same place: a desperation to stay in the driver’s seat.
We crave safety because we are terrified of being vulnerable. We hate not knowing what comes next, so we try to build walls around our lives, hoping to eliminate every possible risk. But we never actually had absolute control in the first place. Demanding a completely safe, predictable existence isn’t a strategy for living—it’s just a way to avoid it.
To demand absolute safety is to ask life to be something it has never been.
Real safety, in the way we usually imagine it, is static. A ceramic bowl doesn’t break if it stays packed in a box, but it also never gets used. Life is only alive because it moves, shifts, and eventually ends. The things that bring us the deepest meaning—falling in love, taking a chance on a new path, or simply caring for another human being—are the very things that make us vulnerable. Risk isn’t a defect in the system; it is the system.
When we try to eliminate every unknown, we aren’t protecting our lives so much as we are shrinking them. We exchange the richness of being present for a false sense of control over a future that was never guaranteed anyway.
Dropping the illusion of control doesn’t mean giving up or living recklessly. It just means shifting where we place our trust. Instead of expecting fate to sign a contract, we learn to trust our own capacity to face whatever comes next.
I no longer try to search for reasons behind my brother-in-law’s death, nor do I view his story as a warning. He lived well, loved his family, and spent his days thoughtfully. That was not a wasted effort just because it didn’t guarantee him decades more. It was simply a good life, lived for as long as it lasted.
I still eat well, exercise, and keep a regular schedule. I do these things because they make me feel clear and useful today, not because I am trying to “control” what happens next.
Life remains entirely unpredictable, and always will be. I’ve just stopped asking it for a guarantee.
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